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Thursday, April 02, 2009

Mayor Sottile Right on

I am no fan of Kingston Mayor Jim Sottile but he is correct in pulling funding for the July 4th celebration this year. I think his quote was right on, how can I justify spending 40k when I am cutting jobs?

EXACTLY.

There is nothing to celebrate when people are losing their jobs, you don't put city employees out of work because the city needs to cut back and than throw in 40k for fireworks. It does not make any sense.

I strongly support that the July 4th celebration move forward, it's an important event that generates revenue to local downtown businesses but those businesses and other member of the community need to step up and fund it.

Next week they will come back saying they will be having it and the mayor will look like the hero. Thats the way it is with everything. For example, the kingston beach is closing he blames someone else then tells the community that he will not let it be closed all summer.

Don the tax payers and the local business pay enough for the limited services we get already?Why should I pay for the white trach bash?Its a shame what this city has become, and most of the blame lies on YOUR mayors shoulders. Dont run and hide from him now. Not long ago you were sucking up to him so bad it stunk!!!!!!!!!!Now he doesnt kiss your a@@ and you start to talk about him?You are nothing but a flip floppin child who cant stand on his on two feet and make a decision and stand by it. You need to grow some balls Jeremy!I am a taxpayer and business owner and dont want to contribute one dime to fund a filty festival full of less than desirables drinking and littering, then running home to have a shootout!You and the mayor can kiss my ass!Print this, I dare you....

Is it un-American if you refuse to buy into a subliminal subconscious tribal tribute to ‘celebrate’ our freedom--with the noise, lights, color and smell of fireworks? If our neighborhoods were like the city of Baghdad or Kabul for example where real live rounds and bombs go bursting in air not like the original thing the Chinese had in mind with the smoke flowers that they called them. We are not a nation of teenage space cadets, so is any of this crap really always necessary? The inventors of the display aspect of gunpowder called them 'smoke flowers' back when their original purpose was strictly for entertainment. Lately when I think of fireworks I cannot suppress the images of war torn places where our armaments are exploding and they do not evoke that cozy semi-delirious heady feeling of ‘shucks and awe’ versus shock and awe where no childlike amazement at the smoke and brilliant flashes of light comes from those we are blowing up; with arms and legs, heads and torsos flying in the air giving proof thru the night that our morals aren’t there. I know it’s unpopular to not advocate for this form of negative reinforcement with the bomblike fireworks and all the fancy colors lighting up the night sky. Kingston could spend the 30 or 40 g’s on domestic violence prevention or intervention campaigns since there is no need to have that amount of money literally go up in smoke (flowers). Seeing the displays never instilled patriotism in me or made me feel that way--I might have just said yeah nice visual stuff very evanescent ethereal ephemeral but still a colossal waste of money and energy. At $40,000 divided by 15 minutes it’s $2666 per minute or $44 per second. That 40 grand is more freaking money than most Kingstonians make in a whole year. We can have a silent moment or have taped explosion noises or some hologram virtual display but save the money for something really worthwhile.

But maybe....hey with another forty grand, they could make a real Benedictine Health Clinic on Albany Avenue as opposed to the fake one they've operated there because they don't want to spend anything to make it run right with an actual office manager according to their usual anality on the subject. Well ok 20 grand might be good enough to cover a few years. (You see, THAT way--we'd THEN have a LOT less fireworks, PERIOD!! (However, one has to give thought to homeless children, in which case I think that there, leaving them exclusively to alderman Dibella and the Family Shelter is well, kind of like driving while tired and claiming your own fatigue blew a tire, and doing minimal Sheltering with United Way monies, while Catholic Charities appears to be doing the absolute minimal to nothing as usual. On second thought put the homeless children downstairs, and help them learn the trade of commercial real estate development, which might come in handy to broker a deal out of homelessness.